Monday, September 11, 2006

Five Years Later....

I will always look forward towards the future.Five years ago I got up at 6:45 am to teach a music theory class at 8 am. It was a beautiful East Texas morning as I drove to SFA. I taught my class and as my class left and the next one came in, I over heard one student complaining about coming to class.

I ask don’t you want to learn today. She told me about the Towers. I really didn’t believe her, it sounded like a bad B-Movie. As her other classmates came in, they all told me the same thing.

I walked outside on that beautiful day, and I could feel how anxious everyone was. It was an eerie feeling that I haven’t felt since 1986 when the Challenger tragedy happen.

One of my colleagues walked by and asked me if I had heard what happen. I answered yes. Then I got on my cell to call my family and my friends. They had all heard. Was the world coming apart?

No. Five years later the world has gone on and so has America. Are things better than five years ago? I would say yes. In many ways I feel safer because I know what could happen. There won’t be another sneak attack on the USA. Our eyes are wide open.

In five years, I have grown a lot. So has America. It is a wiser country. It is always better to know that there is a threat, that way we can prepare.

Five years ago I could maybe run a little bit over a mile in under twenty minutes without coughing my lungs out. Today I can mile over five miles without breaking a sweat.

I train so that I can be in great health twenty years from now. By exercising and eating well now, I am buying quality years in my future.

America’s future is brighter too. I think that we know ourselves better. We know what works and what to fix.

I love this country. It isn’t perfect, it is still the greatest country in the world. And I’m proud to live in this great land, and in East Texas.

One month after September, 11 2001, I felt it was time for me to compose some music in tribute of this tragedy. I composed a new electronic composition on the 11th of each month for one year. On October, 11 2002, I premiered this 42-minute composition. In honor of this five-year anniversary, I turned the composition into a multimedia work.

The images you’ll see are clouds. I look at clouds whenever I look towards the future. At times I get my best ideas looking up into the sky.

If you listen to this 42-minute multimedia composition, I hope that you will focus more on the future rather than tragedy itself. We honor those that were killed for no reason other than that others that hated us for living our lives the way that we wanted to. The others wanted to force us to live as they do. No. We won’t fall when bullies push us. We never have and we never will.

I want to focus on what this world would be like if we all grew out of infancy and worked together. Respected others’ believes. Loved each other not because someone told us to, rather because we all deserve it and it is the right thing to do.

A Year Later…. I humbly give tribute to all those that died on September, 11 2001. I’ll never forget, and I’ll never stop working to make humanity a better place. One day at a time. Pax.

This electronic composition may sound a bit weird to you. Give it a few minutes, it is that way for a reason. To sum up my feelings and emotions, I couldn't use traditional instruments. Don’t listen to this work with 18th century ears, because it was composed for the year of turmoil after the tragedy.